Our Biggest Goal For 2017: Fair Work Week

You’re going to be hearing a lot about our Fair Work Week push this year, so please accept my apologies if you get tired of reading about it. We promise NOT to get tired of fighting for it, and once it passes, chances are you won’t get tired of experiencing the benefits! I’d bet that almost every one of us has been in a situation where we weren’t treated fairly by our employers. Maybe we were asked to work seven or more days in a row, with no day to rest or recuperate, and no sense that we could decline the request. Maybe a company hired more part-time workers instead of giving us more hours. Maybe we were given our schedules at the very last moment—certainly without two weeks notice—or sent home unexpectedly without compensation if we weren’t needed on a given day. Maybe we weren’t allowed to make advance schedule requests, or had those requests ignored without warning.

Our battle for Fair Scheduling, or the Fair Work Week, aims to change that. Our ABC—the Active Ballot Club—is taking this fight all the way in 2017. We do this using your contributions to the ABC, proving each and every time we win that the collective power of so many people’s pennies is actually capable of outweighing a single massive check from a billionaire. (If you don’t already have your recurring contribution to the ABC set up, please call us and do so. Just a dollar a week from each and every one of you can make all the difference.)

We’re going to be reporting the latest on the Fair Work Week every month on the back page of this paper, so keep an eye out. And/or stay informed at a glance via text; just update your contact information here: www.ufcw555.org/textme.

If you have questions about this, or anything else, don’t hesitate to email me at president@ufcw555.org. I am here to amplify the voice of all of our workers, and I take that responsibility very seriously.